Tidalis:Multiplayer Basics
Tidalis has a lot of flexibility for what you can do in multiplayer modes, and all of the content in the game can be played with at least two players, and in some cases with four players during network play.
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Multiple Game Boards Vs Multiple Players
One very important distinction when discussing Tidalis multiplayer is the difference in having multiple boards versus having multiple players.
Two Players On One Computer In One Board
At any time in a single player game, you can use up to two cursors in a single board: the mouse cursor and the keyboard cursor.
On the one hand, this means that you can simply pick which style of control you prefer.
- You can even use a hybrid of both, using the mouse cursor for most things, but the keyboard for specific hotkeys (like Fast Forward and Ultra Fast Forward, in particular). Most expert players are likely to find this to be the fastest way to play solo.
On the other hand, this means that you can have one player working the keyboard while another works the mouse.
- In other words, at any time while you are playing "single player" with the mouse, a second player can walk up and start controlling the keyboard cursor (or vice-versa).
When you are playing with two cursors in one board, the game doesn't know if you have two players or just one; it assumes one, and logs a single name to the high scoreboards, etc. However, this is just a valid way of playing multiplayer as any other, and is the most robust drop-in/drop-out type of co-op that we can imagine.
That said, playing together in a single board has a number of limitations:
- You are still only able to trigger a single stream at a time within that board (it's not per-player).
- With two players moving around in the same board, that can be confusing for some folks (for others, it works just fine).
- Only one player name is logged to the high scores, and you can't do things like set different difficulties per player.
- Because of the way the networking works for the game, playing together in a single board can't work with players that are different computers; you can only share a board if you are sitting at the same computer with the other player.
- You obviously can't play VS modes against the other player if you're both in the same board.
- But, the two of you can play VS against the AI this way (more on this in the section on VS, below).
- The co-op-specific modes are visible in this style of play, because they all require multiple game boards (more on this in the section on Co-Op, below).
Two Players On One Computer In Two Boards
We said the multiplayer options for Tidalis are flexible, right? The game lets you play with a second board in either single-computer or multi-computer play. To play with a second board while you are just playing with two people sitting at the same computer, click the "1 Player" button on the main menu.
On the Player Settings window that pops up, you can enable or disable the second player having their own second board. You can also change the name of both the first and second players, and you can set a handicap for each one, and you can turn on or off "co-op items" for each one individually (more on that in the section on Co-Op, below).
Normally the mouse controls the left (first) board, and the keyboard controls the right (second) board. However, you can switch this in the Settings screen if you wish. When you have two players each with their own board, this leaves no room for the AI to have a board of its own, so you can't play against the AI in VS mode with multiple boards. You can only play against each other.
Network Play: Two Players Each On Their Own Computer
There is an entire section on the specifics of network play, but the basic idea is that you have two players each with their own computer and their own copy of Tidalis, and they want to play together. These two players might be in the same room, or on different continents. It doesn't matter which.
In Network Play, you always have to play with two boards, players can't share a single board across the network. Each player has their own name and score and all that good stuff, and basically this works just like the "Two Players On One Computer In Two Boards" section above, just with two computers instead of one.
In this case, generally the game "host" is on the left, and the "client" is on the right. The host is just the player who advertises that they want to play a game, and the client is the player who sees that advertisement across either the local network or the Internet, and decides to connect. Other than that, there's no difference between the client and the host.
Network Play: Three Or Four Players Can Actually Play Together
During network play, each player has their own board, right? And their own computer -- each with their own keyboard AND mouse. Both the keyboard and mouse work just fine for each computer's game board, which means that each computer can support two players locally. That may have sounded confusing, but it's actually pretty simple -- here's an example:
- Bob Is On Computer A
- Mary Is On Computer B
- When Bob and Mary connect via Network Play, each one can use their own keyboard and mouse to control their individual boards.
- If Bob has Bob Jr. sitting with him, Bob Jr. could work the keyboard while Bob works the mouse.
- Similarly, if Mary's friend Sue is sitting in the same room with her, Sue can take over the keyboard while Mary works the mouse.
- And... voila. You have Bob, Bob Jr., Mary, and Sue all playing together using two game boards across network play.
